ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Umar Ata Bandial said on Friday that judges should interact with both common people, as well as intellectuals, to understand the society’s grievances, aspirations and needs.

“Ultimately as a judge, we are not just concerned with looking for just right and wrong, though in most of the cases it may be something which we will be looking at,” the CJP observed.

“What we need to understand, in the context of human rights, is what rights need protection and how they should be protected.”

He was speaking at the opening of a two-day conference on “Resilient Pakis­tan: Calibrating Population and Resour­ces” at the Supreme Court Auditorium.

The event is designed to share experiences, best practices and evolving strategies to address the population challenge by bringing together speakers from home and abroad.

Justice Bandial calls on people to come forward with solutions, as not everything can be left to the state

The CJP expressed the hope that the conference would come up with solutions on how to protect fundamental rights, adding that he was glad to learn that the focus of the conference was on ways to make population productive so that people could earn their livelihood and contribute to society.

The CJP began his speech with a selection of Quranic verses to highlight the importance of bringing happiness to families. He said it was regrettable that today “we think only about ourselves”.

“Most of us remember that only a generation ago our elders either supported, or were supported, by their relatives to get educated,” the CJP observed.

“What I am trying to emphasise is that when we bring in people into the matrix that will be interacting with society by giving them skills-based education, we see fruits in the form of well-managed families, spacing, choices being exercised and women being respected.

“The people of Pakistan should come forward and offer solutions to the state,” the CJP said.

“We just cannot leave everything to the state as it’s already preoccupied with other priorities.”

Chief Justice Bandial said Islam requires its adherents to have a thought for the poor. “Islam strengthens the bond that families provide us.”

The CJP recalled that Pakistan had virtually no money in 1947, but wealthy individuals stepped in to prop up the fledgling economy.

The country overcame its teething problems and was able to “give loans to Germany four years later and, unbelievingly, even to China in 1971”, the CJP said. He recalled the nation valued simplicity and thrift in the past, but “today we take pride in extravagance and our elite lead us in that direction”.

The first step towards contributing to a cause is to become simple yourself since one’s simplicity generates a surplus to contribute to that cause, the CJP emphasised.

The CJP lamented that for one job there were thousands of applicants these days and petitions over allocation of quotas and related matters went right up to the Supreme Court.

“We have to surmount this problem by creating more job opportunities and

for this we need to groom talented individuals so that they match the employers’ criteria.”

Justice Bandial disagreed with the notion that a rapidly growing population was a strain on resources. He recalled that an initiative was taken during the 1970s to export manpower to the Middle East. That initiative paid off handsomely and the nation is reaping its rewards to this day, he added.

The CJP expressed the hope that experts would enlighten the participants about the success of Muslim countries like Iran and Bangladesh.

The conference was also attended by judges of the Supreme Court and high courts, as well as superior courts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, eminent national and international experts, members from academia, population and public policy professionals, and legal fraternity.

Dr Luay Shabneh, the country representative for UNFPA, described the event as an opportunity to share ideas about ways to bring about a radical change in population control strategy and to make politicians realise the need for placing it at the top of every government’s agenda.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2023